HOUMA, La. – As Hurricane Isaac bore down on this bayou city, some residents abandoned their homes and took shelter in local hotels to wait out the brunt of the storm.

Isaac is now headed straight for Houma, a turn that surprised residents who didn’t expect a direct hit. The wind had picked up by Wednesday morning, blowing trees sideways and sending rain in horizontal sheets. Read More »

Hurricane Isaac made a second landfall near Port Fourchon, La., at around 2:15 a.m. local time. In the National Hurricane Center’s most recent update, the storm resumed a slow movement after holding stationary earlier in the evening. Continued slow movement won’t be good news for residents of southeast Louisiana.

In response, the local National Weather Service office in New Orleans issued a flash flood warning for the levee-protected areas receiving the heaviest amounts of rain, including the city itself. In addition to the strength of the storm, the weather agency warned that “drainage limitations because of gate closures and very high storm tides will augment the flash flood potential during persistent heavy rain.”

With the storm stalled, southerly winds are pushing surge waters right up the Mississippi River, with scattered reports of levee overtopping along the natural river on the southern edge of the New Orleans metropolitan area. Read More »

Gushing winds made trees in New Orleans’ French Quarter bend and contort into yoga positions. But with the eye of Hurricane Isaac moving over water to the southeastern tip of Louisiana, life in some corners of the Big Easy soldiered on, even as the storms were sure to cause flooding and havoc elsewhere.

The Abbey, a 24-hour French Quarter bar within eyeshot of the Mississippi River, never boarded up its windows and remained open. At 10 p.m. local time, six patrons were riding out the storm, said the bar’s manager, who answered the phone but would not provide her full name. Her shift ends at 2 a.m., though her duties will shift over to another manager, she said. The bar will remain open. Read More »

Hurricane Isaac has officially made landfall in southern Louisiana as a strengthening category one storm, according to the National Hurricane Center. Landfall came at about 6:45 p.m. local time Tuesday evening. Maximum sustained winds are estimated at 80mph, with gusts to 100mph possible.

The storm came ashore at the tip of the Mississippi River delta, about 85 miles southeast of New Orleans, though what constitutes land in this part of the state is really a matter of opinion. According to the USGS, southern Louisiana has lost about 500 square miles of protective wetlands – about a football field per hour over the last 30 years. Recent hurricane hits by Katrina and Gustav have sped this process.

With fewer wetlands to buffer the rising storm surge, more water may infiltrate closer to New Orleans during Isaac. A tide gauge in Shell Beach, La. — just southeast of the city, but on the Gulf side of the newly constructed 25-foot surge barrier — recorded surge values as high as eight and a half feet already Tuesday evening, even before landfall. Top end surge estimates by the National Hurricane Center for the height of the storm are about nine to eleven feet, which may very well be exceeded. Read More »

Hours before Hurricane Isaac was forecast to hit New Orleans, Heath Jones, on two hours sleep and unshaven, said most of the local US Army Corps of Engineers’ work was already done. A team of 75 members had been working around the clock since Sunday morning.

By early evening, Mr. Jones, emergency manager of the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers, said most of the major decisions as to what flood gates should be opened or closed had been made. Perhaps “10 to 20″ decisions will occur in the next several hours, but anticipating how to set up a man-made defense against a hurricane is a pre-emptive job, he said.

“The time to do things isn’t when you’ve got 80 mile-per-hour winds staring you in the face,” said Mr. Jones, wearing an Atlanta Braves ball cap, a red Army Corps of Engineers T-shirt and blue jeans. “We should be done by time a hurricane makes landfall.” Read More »

City officials and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers downplayed Tuesday the risk of major flooding in New Orleans.

“We’re confident in the system,’’ said Rachel Rodi, a spokeswoman for the Corps in New Orleans.

The biggest contrast from 2005 is the roughly $15 billion ring of defenses built around the perimeter of New Orleans to keep storm surges at bay – unlike during Katrina, when a rising wall of water from surrounding lakes and waterways overwhelmed levees in the city center.

The reinforced 350-mile flood protection network includes a recently built 1.8-mile-long, 25-foot-high surge barrier east of the city that closed its gates for the first time Tuesday and a new pumping station on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway that can pump 19,000 cubic feet of water a second.

“The Corps has built a wall, a great wall,” said Marcia St. Martin, executive director of the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans. “The fight is now outside the perimeter of the city, that”s the biggest difference.” Read More »